Having hidden just in time to avoid the necromancer on top the bone construct from noticing them as she passed directly through the place where they had hidden, the boney foot of the lizard shaped bone construct landing within a meter of one of the adventurers who had almost turned into human paste beneath the large boney foot, the group of adventurers slowly got up from their hiding spaces with the one who had almost been squashed looking noticeably paler than the rest.
"Good, looks like everything worked out well, let’s get going before the lingering presence disperses and the easy path closes up again." Glancing towards the pale mage who looked like her life had almost left her body seconds earlier, the appointed leader of the group didn’t waste any time after making sure she hadn’t been hurt and directly called for everyone to get moving before they had to start worrying about relentless monster ambushes again.
Rustle~
Of course, given that the pale little mage just so happened to be the weakest among them when it came to physical strength and endurance, he decided to be the one to pick her up and carry her while she calmed down from the scare, she had just experienced. Not daring to waste too much time lingering around. Understanding that wasting even a single second couldn’t just result in ambush loving monsters growing bold enough to approach the path of destruction but also lowered their chances of reaching the dungeon core in time before it finished the dungeon floor.
After all, though their original goal had been to stop the necromancers from destroying the dungeon core, with the emergence of a brand-new dungeon floor that also had a dungeon kingdom inside of it, he wasn’t that worried about the safety of the dungeon core itself any longer. Understanding that even if the necromancer still wanted to target the dungeon core, the dungeon core itself would undoubtedly have prepared knowing that someone was targeting it. Making it close to impossible for a single necromancer in control of a single bone construct surpassing the SS Rank to get her hands on the dungeon core.
If anything, even if the undead army from before had still been around, it was doubtful it would be as effective as it had been back on the eighth floor of the dungeon. After all, there was a good chance that the dungeon core had designed its new home around countering just that kind of attack.
For this reason, the main goal of the adventurers at the moment wasn’t to try and stop the necromancer, but instead to reach the location of the dungeon core and hopefully take advantage of the opportunity that had been presented to them to obtain the unique mana circulation skill.
While this unique skill wasn’t of much use to the more physical focused adventurers amongst them, nobody would refuse a skill that could increase one’s primary stats. Especially given how some even more unique skills required first learning this unique skill.
In a way, the mana circulation skill itself was considered a skill that SS Rank Adventurers like them normally wouldn’t have a chance to encounter under normal circumstances and was the exclusive domain of those who had stepped beyond the SS Rank.
For this reason, it was understandable why this group of adventurers felt a sense of growing excitement after they had fallen into a still developing dungeon floor, as the only method they knew about when it came to obtaining the unique mana circulation skill was to observe a dungeon core in the process of developing a new dungeon floor.
Even if they knew the chances of them reaching the dungeon core in time was low, it didn’t stop them from pushing forward with all their strength... And now that the path forward had essentially been carved open for them by the necromancer and her bone construct, they were more than happy to take advantage of the situation to rush forward in the direction of the dungeon core.
Although, one strange thing they ended up encountering along the way that clearly didn’t have anything to do with the necromancer and bone construct that they found themselves moving behind was several monster strongholds littered with corpses.
Even if they couldn’t see the situation inside those monster strongholds, the bloody scene outside was more than enough for them to understand that whoever was behind this was powerful to the point that even left them shivering in fear.
But the problem wasn’t so much the power of the one behind these massacres, but instead the fact that they had no idea who was the one behind them.
It couldn’t be the necromancer and the bone construct, there simply wasn’t enough time and this kind of massacre leaving behind perfectly good corpses wasn’t the way a necromancer would go about things, as even without time to create undead, they would at the very least have drained the corpses of any usable death energy. Leaving them looking like drained husks that were rather easy to identify... And while some corpses did look like this, it was clear that the necromancer they were following behind had just swept up a few corpses along the way to refill her death energy.
Their next thoughts after the necromancer and her bone construct of course went to Scaly and Verdell, but on second thought, they decided against this as well. Knowing from what they had seen that Verdell and his dragon pet in their eyes might be powerful, but they hadn’t exceeded the SS Rank and weren’t capable of this kind of bloody massacre. Wiping out several monster strongholds in a short period of time.
Instead, the only logical interpretation that they could come to after seeing what they perceived to be several massive monster strongholds that had been wiped out within only a few short hours of the ninth floor of the dungeon having formed, was that the dungeon core had created some powerful monster that exceeded the SS Rank and these monster strongholds had essentially been sacrificed to it to ensure that it could grow strong enough to potential face off against the bone construct under the control of the necromancer.
An understandable conclusion to the adventurers, as they perceived this action as the dungeon core setting up another powerful monster for dealing with the powerful enemy it knew still lurked somewhere within the ninth floor of the dungeon.
But... This would also mean that outside of the dungeon guardian construct that defend the dungeon core and the ruler of the newly formed undead kingdom, the ninth floor of the dungeon would at the very least have three monsters that had surpassed the SS Rank. A kind of power these adventurers hadn’t heard about existing within a dungeon that only had nine floors, as normally, monsters or creatures above the SS Rank would normally only emerge when a dungeon went beyond ten floors.
Though they could still rarely emerge from time to time like the mist serpent on the eighth floor, it wasn’t common and a general way to tell that a dungeon had the talent and ability to expand to ten floors at some point in the distant future.
For a dungeon to have three monsters above the SS Rank on a single floor with the deepest dungeon floor being the ninth was unprecedented and would undoubtedly draw far more attention than the presence of an undead kingdom on the ninth floor.
As for why the ruler of the undead kingdom was already seen as surpassing the SS Rank? That was because any undead kingdom formed within a dungeon would be under the control of a lich, and the weakest lich had already surpassed the SS Rank. Meaning it wasn’t difficult to get a read of the current upper strength of the ninth floor of the Swirling Sands Dungeon.
The only positive to the situation they found themselves in was the fact that this third powerful monster lurking somewhere within the ninth floor of the dungeon should have already been pulled away by the dungeon core and placed somewhere close to where the dungeon core itself would hide away after it finished the construction of the ninth floor of the dungeon. Meaning they wouldn’t have to worry about this powerful monster suddenly ambushing them along the way.
Not to mention, even if it decided to lie in ambush, its first target wouldn’t be them, but the necromancer and bone construct they were chasing behind. After all, the dungeon core would undoubtedly have imprinted that necromancer’s appearance into the consciousness of the monster and made sure that it viewed the necromancer with the utmost hostility. Ensuring that even when the dungeon core left its current overpowered state and lost control over this powerful monster, it would still target the necromancer.
Avoiding a situation like the one with the mist serpent where it had ended up being attacked by one of its own monsters, a truly embarrassing situation for a dungeon core...